“It’s about the human cost of the war on terror. Talking before had seen the play, that becomes more obvious after it. “I am critiquing and looking at the business of the state and how it conducts its affairs,” she affirmed. “It’s not a defence of anything,” she asserted to counter the idea that it might be trying to redraw a western media narrative that has the Americans as the good guys and the Pakistanis as the bad ones. Sometimes their interests coincide – but more revealingly and more powerfully is what happens when they don’t, Ahmad skilfully suggests… then everything breaks loose and it makes for excellent drama. In “ The Dishonoured” it’s too simple and facile and incorrect to see the Pakistanis as the good guys in this play and the Americans as the evil ones or vice-versa. “It’s very much my understanding and about the things that interest me.” “The process of writing a play is about questions,” she stressed. Gulzar (Maya Soroya), Colonel Tariq (Robert Mountford) and Captain Badshah Gul (Zaqi Ismail) “You’re often told, ‘write what you know’ as a new writer,” she explained, “but I write what ‘you want to know’ and explore the geo-political dimensions. It’s very easy to see matters in black and white – especially after a terror attack such as in Brussels or Paris, but it’s just that not simple or straightforward to eradicate terrorism, even if you are fighting what you believe to be a very clear ‘war on terror’. “The play is looking at the characters’ journey and how far do you go and how much is driven by a real need to fight the war and how much is driven by other agendas – and ones you don’t really know.” Speaking last week as her play opened in London, she told “Here you are fighting this war and at what point do you resemble the people you are fighting? What is hugely impressive is the way she explores US and Pakistani interpretations on ‘the war of terror’ each side defining it in their own world vision, which of course, is not the same and while their interests may coincide at certain pragmatic points, it’s hard to see who is actually benefitting from such a war, when both sides have quite different agendas essentially. Colonel Tariq (Robert Mountford) and Shaida (Maya Saroya) in 'The Dishonoured'
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